Translation
by clair beaubien
Summary: Tag to Changing Channels. Sam asks Bobby to translate the Game Show questions. The story contains one bad word.


I came out of the bathroom after my shower to an empty motel room. Sam'd been sitting on his bed staring at a dark TV when I went in, but a quick look out the front window showed me that he was at the trunk of the car. He must've been looking for something.

My phone rang then, Bobby, and I'd barely said hello when he barked at me,

"_Where the hell's your brother?" _He sounded like he was mad at Sam.

"He's out at the car, why?"

"You working a job right now?"

"No, we're still -."

"He just called me, said you were on a case and needed me to translate a little Japanese for him…"

_Japanese? _Why would Sam need -

The game show. The questions in Japanese. Leave it to Sam to memorize what got said.

"_And?"_ I asked.

"Well, it ain't like his pronunciation was perfect. But near as I could make out, it was asking if your folks would be alive if Sam wasn't born."

It felt like my heart dropped into my guts when I heard that. _Please don't tell me the answer was -_

"And apparently the correct answer was '_yes'_."

_**DAMMIT.**_

"Bobby -."

"Never mind me, get to Sam."

I slapped the phone off and hurried out to the car and Sam at the trunk - with the weapons.

"Sam?"

He was leaning over the trunk, digging through it like he'd lost something. He turned to me, with that pinched look like he was thinking hard about something.

"What're you looking for?" I asked him.

He looked down at the mess he was making.

"I'm not looking for anything. I just - I thought I could organize the trunk. We haven't - it's been busy, and we haven't - I just -."

He started 'organizing' again, which came down to moving stuff from one side of the trunk to the other, and then back again. I put my hand on his arm to stop him.

"This is good enough for now. Why don't you come back inside? You were gonna have a shower, remember? I left you a little hot water…"

"No, I hafta finish this first."

"Sam, c'mon. You're kinda just making a mess."

He stopped moving the stuff, but he didn't straighten up or look at me.

"All I _ever_ do is make a mess."

Sammy could be one of the most self-pitying people on earth if he ever really wanted to be. A dead mother, a father who was by turns devoted, distant, and demanding, an entire life lived out of motel rooms and backseats, and the only person he ever had to really rely on was a brother just a few years older than him who only _pretended_ he wasn't as clueless as he always felt. All Sam ever had of a normal life was six months that he couldn't remember. Even Stanford, even with Jess – how do you balance 'normal' across the shoulders of a kid who had Sam's life?

But Sam never has been self-pitying, not really. Yeah he griped and still griped about how we had to grow up. He argued with Dad, with me. He ran away once or twice physically, and a score of times emotionally. But he never once asked or expected anyone else to fix his problems or clean up his messes. All he ever wanted was to be _allowed_ to take care of himself.

So when he said he only ever made messes, I knew he wasn't pitying himself. Even more than simply blaming himself, he was _accepting_ the blame, owning it, shouldering it the way he always ever shouldered the good, bad, and monstrous in our lives. In the short however many minutes since he'd talked to Bobby, Sam had picked up the guilt of Mom and Dad's deaths and our lives and burned it into his soul as sure as those Anokian symbols were burned into our ribs.

"Why didn't you tell me what Bobby said?"

He shrugged and shook his head and anybody else might've believed him when he asked,

"Bobby called? What'd he say?"

I've never been anybody else.

"_You know._"

He swallowed a couple of times and didn't look at me and moved stuff back over to the other side of the trunk. He huffed,

"You can't even say it."

I didn't want to say it because I didn't want it to become more real to Sam. But now, _not_ saying it would be worse.

"You think Mom and Dad would be alive if you hadn't been born." I waited but he didn't say anything. Just kept _organizing_. "Why didn't you tell me? Sam?" I touched his arm again but he threw me off.

"_I didn't want you to know. Okay? _I mean – hell – you were probably thinking it all this time anyway, maybe since Dad died, maybe since before then. I just – I didn't want you to know it was true."

"_It's __**not**__ true."_ I shot back at him. "What? You're gonna believe some fake game show host on some fake game show that the Trickster wrung us through?"

"_Gabriel…"_ Sam said, softly, like using his proper name actually made a difference.

"_Whatever."_ I snapped. "After everything he's done to us, to _you_, you're gonna believe anything he's got to say?"

"It's true." He said that with another shrug and the tilt of his head and tug of his eyebrows that were the only outward suggestion of the complete desolation I knew he felt inside. "Not because Gabriel says so, but because it is. It just is. Mom died because of me. Dad died, _you_ died, all because I was born."

"No – we died because Mom made a deal. She sold you to Yellow Eyes to save Dad, and Dad sold us to a bullshit life to avenge her. _That's_ what stunk up our lives from Day One. Whether or not you were born, Yellow Eyes was coming to collect and the exact same thing would've happened – Mom was gonna try to stop him and she was gonna die. That is _not_ your fault."

He shrugged, again. His '_yeah, whatever, I'll stop talking about it so you'll shut up about it'_ gesture. Then he went back to _organizing._

"I'll be in after I'm done here." He said. Trying to get rid of me. Try again, Sammy.

"I'm not leaving you out here in this mood with the weapons."

He laughed, bitter and snarky. "I _can't_ kill myself, remember?"

"Yeah, well, your whole life the best way to get you to do _anything_ was to tell you that you _couldn't,_ so I'm not taking any chances. Leave this and come inside. Have a shower and we'll get some dinner. Maybe we can even just jump ahead to the hangovers and save ourselves some time."

Sam finally gave up his organizing and turned to sit on the edge of the trunk, all slack and stooped like he was exhausted.

"Sometimes – sometimes it feels like all I have of Mom and Dad is what I _want_ to have had with them, and then something like this comes along and – and I just don't know what I have anymore."

"They loved us." I offered. "They weren't perfect – " _just_ _like this answer _"- but they loved us. That's what we have."

He shrugged. Again. I was getting really tired of that. Then he heaved a deep breath in and out, stood up and shut the trunk.

"I'll take a fast shower and we can get going."

Still trying to get rid of me.

Still not working.

"Sam – _wait_." I stopped him from walking away from me and into the motel room. He looked at me with a mix of patience, aggravation, exhaustion and interest. "You are _not_ the reason Mom and Dad are dead. Somebody holds up guilt to you and it's not a _mirror_, OK? You do _not_ see yourself reflected in it. You look at the person or Trickster or angel or _whatever _holding up that guilt to you and it's _their_ guilt they're showing you. Heaven, angels, demons, they set this up since before time, so whatever happened, _they _are responsible for it. _They're_ the guilty ones. Not you. You got me?"

He thought about it, but he kept his eyes on mine so I knew he wasn't perfecting me a lie. Maybe I'd worn him down, maybe I'd dazzled him with my logic. Whichever it was, whatever he told me was going to be the truth.

"Okay." He finally said, one simple word.

One simple word that I felt like I'd gone ten rounds to pry out of him. It wasn't all the answer I wanted, but it was enough for now.

"_Okay_. C'mon, take a shower and let's get some food."

We went in and Sam took a fast shower and we got ready to hit a restaurant, preferably one with a well-stocked bar. We were just about out the door when my phone rang.

"Hey, Bobby -."

"_**When the hell were you gonna let me know what happened?"**_He all but took my head off. I considered my answers and my options, then held the phone out to Sam.

"_It's for you."_

The End.


End file.
